Authorities released a roughly 80-second 911 recording on Tuesday from the Silver Rail Elementary shooting in Bend, Oregon, and it captures Kaylub Giamanco telling a dispatcher he was ready to shoot the gunman before he rushed into the school and killed the 16-year-old attacker.
Giamanco, 36, was driving when the call came in as the Oct. 15 shooting was still unfolding. On the recording, he said, “Someone's at the school, at my daughters' school with a gun. I have a gun, and I will shoot them right now if I have to,” then repeated, “This is my daughters' school. I'm about to go kill this kid,” before the dispatcher replied, “We have help en route.”
That call matters because it records the panic and split-second decisions inside a parent’s worst moment. Giamanco’s two daughters were inside Silver Rail Elementary School and survived the attack, while the gunman killed three children ages 5, 8 and 11 and a 25-year-old teacher. Giamanco later told Oregon Public Broadcasting that he went for his gun after he saw the shooter throw his weapon over the school’s fence and climb after it.
There is also a harder detail in the recording: when the dispatcher asked whether he knew who the shooter was, Giamanco answered, “No, I don't f---ing know, I was just driving,” even as he said he was about to go kill him. That contradiction sits at the center of the call released Tuesday — a father acting on instinct before he had any idea who he was facing.
By the end of the recording, the outcome is already known. Giamanco went into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend with his handgun and killed the shooter. What remains unanswered is why authorities chose Tuesday to make the call public, and whether more recordings or records from the Oct. 15 shooting will follow.
